It seems like a little thing, but little things are the ones that fall through the cracks.

So when the Joe Louis Arena is torn down, it seems wrong to leave the fate of that revered name in the hands of developers who aren’t from Detroit and who aren’t required to honor his memory.

It’s not their job; it’s Detroit’s.

My subsequent call for ways to honor Louis — in my column, on Twitter and on WJR-AM's (760) Paul W. Smith show — yielded a flood of great ideas — ranging from erecting a statue of Louis on Hart Plaza and renaming it Joe Louis Plaza to relocating the Joe Louis statue in the lobby of Cobo Center to a peace garden on the Detroit River.

One listener suggested naming the city’s new Major League Soccer Stadium — if it’s built — after Louis.

But one of my favorite ideas came from W.T. Menge, a 76-year-old sports fan, Cooley High graduate and retired Detroit Public Schools middle school teacher — a regular guy who used to listen to boxing on the radio. He suggested that Detroit build a City of Champions Museum, honoring Louis and other greats whose names and stories may get lost to history.

"Most of the people who go to hockey games know very little if anything about Joe Louis," he speculated. This would give them an opportunity to learn. Building a museum and putting Joe Louis front and center and having other people in the museum, baseball people, football people, basketball people, you can give a better story about what they did and why they became great. And you could move the statue of him from Cobo to there. It would be a wonderful place and draw thousands of people.

But one idea came with a Joe Louis accomplishment that was news to me. Louis, the Brown Bomber, the longest-reigning world heavyweight champion in history, also was the first African American to play in a PGA Tour event. It happened in 1952 when he was allowed “under a sponsor exemption by Chevrolet to play in the San Diego Open,” Michael Follis wrote to WJR on Tuesday. Louis learned to play golf at Palmer Park in Detroit.

“With the golf course at Palmer Park in a state of disrepair, this could be the perfect opportunity to remember Joe Louis as a champion of integration, inclusion and social progress, by renaming the course Joe Louis Golf Course at Palmer Park,” Follis suggested. "The local business/nonprofit community could raise the necessary funds to rebuild the course into a quality facility, available for the next generation of Detroit athletes.”

But Follis, a board member of The First Tee of Greater Detroit, whose CEO is Louis’ son, Joe Louis Barrow, offered more: “With Palmer Park’s central location, it’s the easiest golf course for our 450 kids to get to. Re-building the course would benefit the city’s youth, transform Palmer Park into another Detroit Gem, enshrine Joe Louis’ name for another generation and represent he stood for: inclusion and breaking down barriers."

Joe Louis was one of several hundred who flocked to the municipal golf courses as the season opened officially in 1941. Joe was among the 300 who played the Rackham course. (Photo11: Detroit Free Press archives)

According to a New York Times account of the PGA event, Louis didn’t just need an exemption as an amateur, but at the time, P.G.A. of America by-laws included a Caucasian-only clause.

Louis and others “put together a petition and delivered it to the California governor, Pat Brown, who declared that the clause was unconstitutional,” the Times story said. “The P.G.A. relented and permitted Louis to play in the event as an exempt amateur. Louis, the first African American to compete in a P.G.A.-sanctioned event, missed the cut but made a powerful case for the inclusion of minority players in the sport, leading to the removal in 1961 of the Caucasian-only clause.”

That’s one major case. But the final arbiter of whether the Louis name graces a street or a park or a rec center or a golf course or a plaza would be city officials, including Mayor Mike Duggan.

Fresh off a successful State of the City address where he announced millions of dollars in investment in Detroit’s outer neighborhoods and increased police and fire presence, Duggan said Wednesday that he is putting this one more thing on his agenda.

“The city of Detroit will honor Louis’ memory in the way he deserves,” he said. “I agree with you that we need to do something appropriate for his achievement. So I’m anxious to see the suggestions because we’re going to talk to the family, and we’re going to take it seriously and come up with something that’s appropriate.”

Duggan said that when the Joe is demolished, the creditor who got the arena in a bankruptcy settlement “has rights to it for a year or two. If they don’t develop it, then the city gets it back. And it will end up as riverfront development.”

That means however Louis is honored, it may not be there. Timothy Frendo, a Freemason with Detroit Lodge No. 2 (Masonic Temple), has another location:

“Most people do not realize that the Masonic Temple actually has two theaters inside its walls. One was renamed the Jack White Theater a few years ago. However, the larger of the two theaters, which holds roughly 5,000 people and has been host to all the big names over the past few decades, goes unnamed. Did I mention that they also still host boxing events at this theater? I thought it might be a nice gesture to name the main theater at the Temple after Joe Louis.”

The discussion even reignited debate over the importance of that big, black fist sculpture aimed at Hart Plaza, which some believe honors Louis — and which the mayor says he likes.

Let me be clear: I’ve never seen that fist in any positive way, and I’ve always hoped for an opportunity to move it somewhere else. I love the idea of placing a statue of Joe Louis there. That would work, one reader who agrees suggested, if the statue were at least 40 feet tall.

Honoring Louis means something to me — as someone who wants us to ramp up the fight to teach black history as a part of American history rather than offer it as a separate commercial in a centuries-long narrative of the story of America. It’s past time for us to celebrate the many hidden figures and hidden facts that have been lost to the greater narrative because of our one-sided job of teaching American history.

It means something to George and Candice Joseph, too. After my initial column, Mr. Joseph wrote to me on behalf of himself and his wife, Joe Louis’ daughter, Candice.

A Detroit native who attended Wayne State, George Joseph sent me a letter he wrote after learning of the Joe’s imminent demise:

“The city of Detroit and the owners of the Detroit Red Wings honored Joe Louis and the sporting world by dedicating the Joe Louis Arena on October 8, 1983.

“It should be interesting to note:

• There is no Babe Ruth Stadium.

• There is no Jack Dempsey Arena.

• There is no Muhammad Ali Arena.

• There is no Michael Jordan Arena.

• There is a Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan.

“It’s hard for us to imagine the significance of Joe Louis to an entire generation of our parents, grandparents, and the downtrodden of those depression times. There is no one in today’s sports world who inspires the hope and dignity that Detroit’s Brown Bomber did for so many.”

I was so honored to hear from George Joseph — who said he’s been with his wife for 37 years. (And his official fight record at home is 0 and 37.)

He said he and his wife have met with the archivist at Little Caesars Arena to discuss some type of tribute to Louis within the arena.

But Joe Louis wasn’t a hockey player. He was America’s greatest boxer at a time when America needed to show the world that its way of life — that freedom — was great. And he apparently made a huge difference in opening the doors of professional golf to black players.

Joe Louis was a hero who grew out of a boxer and who helped America stand tall at a time when it was needed. He was a boxer at a time boxing was more than a sport.

We can debate how to honor him, but honor him we should in a way commensurate with the arena that has borne his name for more than three decades.